On This Day in History, February 17: First Radio Announcer for Dodgers
Sportscaster Walter Lanier “Red” Barber was born on Feb. 17, 1908, in Columbus, Mississippi.
Barber’s first professional play-by-play experience was announcing the Cincinnati Reds’ opening day on the radio in 1934. That game was also the first major league game he had ever seen.
In the winter of 1938-’39, Larry MacPhail, who had been hired as president of the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1937, lured Barber from Cincinnati to New York to give the city its first radio coverage of big-league baseball from Brooklyn’s Ebbets Field.